• Tribology and Lubricants
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• 제26권3호
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• pp.184-189
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• 2010

In this paper, tactile response characteristics in medical haptic interface are investigated to characterize the feeling of contact between the finger skin and the organic tissue when a finger is dragged over tissue. In order to represent the tactile feeling, a prototype tactile display incorporating Magneto-Rheological (MR) fluid has been developed. Tactile display devices simulate the finger's skin to feel the sensations of contact such as compliance, curvature and friction. Thus, the tactile display provides the surface information of organic tissue to the surgeon using different actuating mechanisms ranging from the conventional mechanical motor to the smart material actuators. In order to investigate the compliance feeling of human finger's touch, vertical force responses of the tactile display under the various magnetic fields have been assessed. Also, frictional resistive force responses of the tactile display are investigated to simulate the action of finger's dragging. From the results, different tactile feelings are observed as the applied magnetic field is varied and arrayed magnetic poles combinations. This research gives a smart technology of tactile displaying.

• 한국정밀공학회지
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• 제32권10호
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• pp.873-878
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• 2015

A finger exoskeleton actuated by ionic polymer metal composite (IPMC) actuators has been developed. In order to evaluate performance of cylindrical grasping of finger exoskeletons, they were equipped with a hand dummy, which is composed of four fingers. The finger dummy has three joints that can be actuated by bending the IPMC actuators. A four finger grasping motion was analyzed using cameras, and cylindrical grasping motion was accomplished within two minutes after applying a 4 volt direct voltage to the IPMC actuators. A pull out test was also performed to evaluate the cylindrical grasping force of the finger exoskeletons actuated by the IPMC actuators. Each finger generated about 2 N of holding force when grasping the cylinder which had a diameter of 50 mm.

• KIEE International Transactions on Electrophysics and Applications
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• 제5C권6호
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• pp.264-269
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• 2005

The electrostatic comb drive actuator is one of the main building blocks in the field of micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). Most of the comb actuators presented previously have fingers that are rectangular in shape which produce a stable, constant force output during actuation. The use of sawtooth fixed fingers in a comb drive, which were presumed to produce an increasing force output with displacement due to the increased number of regions where fringing force, the driving force of comb actuators, appear. The dimensions of the sawtooth were derived from finite element analysis (FEA) of simplified finger models with sawtooth type fingers of various dimension and were compared to the rectangular finger model that showed that the sawtooth type fingers have $7\~9$ times stronger driving force. Finally, comb drive actuators with sawtooth type and rectangular fingers were fabricated and although the gap was bigger, the comb actuator with sawtooth type fingers showed about 1.7 times greater electrostatic force than the one with rectangular fingers at equal driving voltages. In conclusion, using the proposed sawtooth type comb fingers in a comb drive makes it possible to increase its displacement or reduce the driving voltage.

• 한국정밀공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국정밀공학회 2010년도 춘계학술대회 논문집
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• pp.1017-1018
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• 2010

• 대한인간공학회지
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• 제25권2호
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• pp.155-160
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• 2006

Motor intentional disorders have been studied by visual examination methods such as cross-response task and Luria loop. To provide more analytical, quantitative information for motor intentional disorders, the present study developed a method which evaluates force control capabilities by the index finger. The assessment method analyzes the finger force control capabilities at four stages(initiation, development, maintenance, and termination) with NK Pinch-GripTM(force resolution= 0.098 N; temporal resolution=50Hz). By applying the assessment method, a patient(age=66) with callosal legion was compared with 6 healthy males(mean age=65.5, SD=2.8), showing significant but different decreases in force control capabilities depending on hand and response location. The assessment method would be of use to better understand various aspects of motor intentional disorders such as the effects of the disorders to the neurological network of the brain and severity assessment of the disorders.

• 한국정밀공학회지
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• 제26권8호
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• pp.132-141
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• 2009

In this paper, we describe finger force estimation from surface electromyogram (sEMG) data for intuitive and delicate force control of robotic devices such as exoskeletons and robotic prostheses. Four myoelectric sites on the skin were found to offer favorable sEMG recording conditions. An artificial neural network (ANN) was implemented to map the sEMG to the force, and its structure was optimized to avoid both under- and over-fitting problems. The resulting network was tested using recorded sEMG signals from the selected myoelectric sites of three subjects in real-time. In addition, we discussed performance of force estimation results related to the length of the muscles. This work may prove useful in relaying natural and delicate commands to artificial devices that may be attached to the human body or deployed remotely.

• 대한인간공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한인간공학회 1992년도 추계학술대회논문집
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• pp.46-53
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• 1992

Finger movements in the sagittal plane mainly consist of flexion and extension about the metacarpophalangeal(MCP) and proximal interphalangeal(PIP) joints. A kinematic finger model was developed with the assumption of constant tendon moment arms. Equations of static equilibrium were derived for the finger model using the principle of virtual work. Equations of static equilibrium for the finger model were indeterminate since only three equations were available for five unknown variables(forces). The number of variables was reduced based on information on muscular activities in finger movements. Then the amounts of forces which muscles exerted to maintain static equilibrium against external loads were computed from the equilibrium equations. The muscular forces were expressed mathematically as functions of finger positions, tendon moment arms, lengths of phalanges, and the magnitude and direction of external load. The external finger strength were computed using the equations of muscular forces and anatomical data. Experiments were performed to measure finger strengths. Measurements were taken in combinations of four finger positions and four directions of force exertions. Validation of the finger models and of procedure to estimate finger strengths was done by comparing the results of computations and experiments. Significang differences were found between the predicted and measured finger strengths. However, the trends of finger strengths with respect to finger positions were similar inboth the predicted and measured. These findings indicate that the finger model and the procedure to predict finger strengths were correctly developed.

• 전자공학회논문지B
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• 제33B권2호
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• pp.10-19
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• 1996

This paper presents a finger-shaped multisensor system which can measure the tyep and position of a target surface by contactl. The multi-sensor system consists of a sphere-shpaed optical tactile sensor located at the finger tip and a force/torque sensor located at the joint of a finger. The optial tactile sensor determines the type and position of the target surface using the shape and position of the CCD image of the touching area generated by a contact between the sensor and the taget surface. The force/torque sensor also determines the position and surface normal vector by applying the distributionof forces and torques t the contact point to the equations of finger shape. The measurements on the position and surface normal vector at a contact point obtined by two individual sensors are fused using a statistical method. The integrated sensor system has 0.8mm error in position measurement and 1.31$^{\circ}$ error in normal vector measurement. The developed sensor system has many applications, such as autonomous compliance control, automatic grasping and recognition, etc.

• 제어로봇시스템학회논문지
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• 제6권5호
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• pp.404-414
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• 2000

This paper addresses the development of a 3-fingered humanoid robot hand system and a real-time grasp synthesis of multifingered robot hands to find grasp configurations which satisfy the force closure condition of arbitrary shaped objects. We propose a fast and efficient grasp synthesis algorithm for planar polygonal objects, which yields the contact locations on a given polygonal object to obtain a force closure grasp by the multifingered robot hand. For an optimum grasp and real-time computation, we develop the preference and the hibernation process and assign physical constraints of the humanoid hand to the motion of each finger. The preferences consist of each sublayer reflecting the primitive preference similar to the conditional behaviors of humans for given objectives and their arrangements are adjusted by the heuristics inspired from human's grasping behaviors. The proposed method reduces the computational time significantly at the sacrifice of global optimality, and enables the grasp posture to be changable within two-finger and three-finger grasps. The performance of the presented algorithm is evaluated via simulation studies to obtain the force-closure grasps of polygonal objects with fingertip grasps. The architecture suggested is verified through experimental implementation to our robot hand system by solving the 2- or 3-finger grasp synthesis.

• 한국정밀공학회지
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• 제29권7호
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• pp.717-722
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• 2012

This paper presents the design and dynamic model of the finger exoskeleton actuated by Ionic Polymer Metal Composites (IPMC) to assist a tip pinch task. Although this exoskeleton will be developed to assist 3 degree-of-freedom motion of each finger, it has been currently made to perform the tip pinch task using 1 degree-of-freedom mechanism as the first step. The six layers of IPMC were stacked in parallel to increase the low actuation force of IPMC. In addition, the finger dummy was manufactured to evaluate the performance of the finger exoskeleton. The pinch task experiments, which were performed on the finger dummy with the developed exoskeleton, showed that the pinch force close to the desired level was obtained. Moreover, the dynamic model of the exoskeleton and finger dummy was developed in order to perform the various analyses for the improvement of the exoskeleton.